A coalition of venture capital and private equity firms from the US and India has announced the formation of the India Deep Tech Investment Alliance (IDTA), a new industry group aimed at mobilising private capital and expertise for deep tech companies. The announcement was made by Sriram Viswanathan, founding managing partner of Silicon Valley–based venture capital firm Celesta, at the Semicon India 2025 event, organised by the India Semiconductor Mission in partnership with SEMI and industry associations.
Conceived as a step to strengthen US–India deep tech collaboration, the founding members of IDTA include Celesta Capital, Accel, Blume Ventures, Gaja Capital, Ideaspring Capital, Premji Invest, Tenacity Ventures, and Venture Catalysts. While announcing the Alliance, Viswanathan also revealed $1 billion in capital commitments—so far—for priority deep tech sectors in the country.
The MoU signing ceremony at SEMICON India 2025 marked a key milestone in strengthening India’s semiconductor value chain through government–industry collaboration. Moderated by Ashok Chandak, President, SEMI India & IESA, the ceremony reinforced India’s rising global leadership… pic.twitter.com/5WAa9TijXx
— SEMI India (@SEMIIndia) September 2, 2025
In July, the Union cabinet approved the Research Development and Innovation (RDI) Scheme with a corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore (about $12 billion). Key objectives of this scheme include supporting the acquisition of technologies that are critical or of high strategic importance and facilitating the creation of a Deep-Tech Fund of Funds. The launch of the new Alliance builds on the momentum created by this ambitious scheme, which aims to provide risk capital for innovative startups in India’s deep tech sector.
India currently has more than 3,600 deep tech startups—74 per cent of them AI-led—making it the world’s sixth-largest deep tech hub. However, the reluctance of major Indian enterprises to make bold, billion-dollar bets on deep tech and AI has long been cited as a hurdle for Indian technologists. Observers have also noted that most Indian unicorns have been built with funding from foreign investors, highlighting a persistent weakness in the country’s innovation ecosystem.
Notably, when Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal made a controversial remark comparing the Indian startup ecosystem to China’s—arguing that Indian startups are focused on food delivery and gig work while China has raced ahead in deep-tech innovation—technologists in deep tech had responded strongly. Some of the deep-tech founders, especially from the semiconductor domain, had openly criticised the challenges they face even during capacity-building phases because of the tax burden as well as the flaws in the current framework that put Indian startups at a disadvantage compared to their foreign competitors.
The government’s current measures appear to be aimed at addressing the challenge of securing the kind of strong domestic financial backing required to build cutting-edge deep tech ventures, including semiconductor startups. Alliances like IDTA are expected to ease some of the burden on the government.
IDTA has committed to making long-term, thesis-driven investments in Indian-incorporated startups and scale-ups across semiconductors, space, quantum, robotics, artificial intelligence, biotech, medical devices, energy and climate, and the digital economy. Each member of IDTA will commit private capital over a 5–10 year horizon to India-domiciled deep tech enterprises. In addition, IDTA members will provide these companies with mentorship, network access, and capital, while also helping portfolio firms expand into the Indian market.
The alliance plans to expand its membership significantly over time by adding global and Indian investors who are willing to make the required commitments to collaboration and capital deployment.
“Deep tech represents the next frontier of global innovation, and we expect great companies to emerge and lead in this space from the US–India corridor,” said Viswanathan. “With the catalytic support mobilised under the RDI Scheme, this is a historic opportunity to deepen the US–India partnership, power the next wave of transformative global companies, and unlock growth opportunities that will benefit both India and the US.”
Interestingly, IDTA’s formal launch comes at a time when India–US relations appear strained over tariff measures introduced by US President Donald Trump. Back in February, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the US, Trump and Modi launched the TRUST (Transforming the Relationship Utilizing Strategic Technology) initiative to expand bilateral cooperation in critical and emerging technologies and supply chains. Though the foreign policy and geopolitical situation have since taken a new turn, the new alliance is placing its bet on Indian startups.
New direction needed?
India plans to build a $110 billion semiconductor market by 2030. At the Semicon event, Modi announced that “the days are not far when the smallest chip made in India will drive the biggest change in the world.” Nevertheless, critics point out that the joint venture between Tata Electronics and Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC) in Dholera, Gujarat, remains the only Silicon CMOS fabrication (fab) facility in India where actual wafer manufacturing is planned.
Approved in February 2024 under the India Semiconductor Mission, the Dholera facility is a full-scale foundry designed to produce chips on mature nodes. It will target applications such as power management ICs, display drivers, microcontrollers, and high-performance computing logic for industries including automotive, computing, and wireless communications.
Other semiconductor units approved in India are largely focused on Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) or Assembly, Testing, Marking, and Packaging (ATMP) facilities, which handle post-fabrication processes like packaging and testing rather than wafer production. The SiCSem facility in Odisha, which also involves fabrication, specializes in silicon carbide (SiC)—a niche material for high-power applications—unlike the broader CMOS fabrication planned at the Tata-PSMC plant.
Speaking at a panel discussion at Semicon, Haris Osman, Senior Vice President at iMEC—the world’s leading independent nanoelectronics R&D hub—offered a critical perspective. He noted that while there has been a wave of major announcements, there has yet to be a concrete plan for setting up a research and development fab.
“India needs an advanced R&D fab, and I believe it should be under the government’s purview because it requires significant investment. My key message is: do not underestimate the importance of R&D. It usually takes many years for technologies to move from research to full-scale manufacturing,” Osman said.
He further stressed that the days of “plug-and-play” technologies are long gone. “You can no longer just read a run sheet, feed it into the tool, and expect things to work. Even when a technology is already developed, implementing it in a new fab requires significant effort—especially in a new facility like the one Tata is building,” he added.
